Coronavirus simulator becomes Washington Post’s most-read story ever

A data visualisation has become the most-read story ever published by the Washington Post. The newspaper’s graphic reporter Harry Steven is the mind behind the simple but stunning visualisation that effectively portrays how a virus like Covid-19 expands.

Two days after the publication of the story, Washington Post’s media reporter Paul Farhi announced via Twitter the story became the most-read ever in the history of the newspaper’s website.

At this point, the coronavirus simulator has been so widely shared that you’ve probably seen it. But if you haven’t, here’s a summary: Stevens, who has been working at the Washington Post for only six months, created a simulator of a fake disease called simulitis to explain the effectiveness of social distance to flatten the curve of contagion. 

The story, published on 14 March quickly went viral. The timing was perfect – with the majority of the confirmed cases now in Europe and the United States, local governments started addressing drastic preventive measures to stop the spreading. 

Even world leaders started sharing the article. Former US president Barack Obama was one of them. His tweet had 125,800 retweets, more than 385,500 likes, and about 9,900 replies. Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar and Melinda Gates also shared the tweet, while Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro mentioned the Post’s story on national TV while addressing the population.

According to the social app Crowdtangle, Steven’s story had 493,069 interactions on Facebook and more than 15,000 on Reddit. Very impressive, right?

Data journalist Alberto Cairo wrote in his blog that this is another reason “for organisations to invest in a graphics team”. Cairo also predicts that the Post’s data viz will become “one of the most iconic images of 2020, and one of the most influential graphics ever made”. 

This demonstrates the impact a simple, but brilliantly executed data-driven story can have, and how investing in data teams is becoming imperative for newsrooms across the world. 

In 2017, The Global Data Journalism survey (that gathered information from 181 respondents from 43 countries), revealed that only 46% of the organisations asked said they have a dedicated data team. The study also highlighted that training in data analysis, statistics, coding, data science, and machine learning amongst those consulted was low. 

However, a survey conducted by the International Center for Journalism and Google News Initiatives last year suggests the panorama might be changing for the better. According to the study The state of technology across newsrooms, 61% of the journalists responded they analyse and use data to create stories at least weekly, an increased from 36% when compared to the survey’s results in 2017.

For more information on how newsrooms are using data viz to report on coronavirus, read 5 fantastic data visualisation stories exploring coronavirus.